National Law on Road Rationalization
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Menghe's National Law on Road Rationalization is a set of regulations drawn up by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MoTC) and passed by the National Assembly in 2021. In addition to standardizing road construction regulations by consolidating all public roadways into four types, it also lays out a set of best practices for urban planning and road transit design. The new standards became mandatory for all new road construction projects approved after 1 July 2021, and the law also laid out a set of recommended timetables for the modification of existing roadways which do not comply with the standards.
Background
During the Menghean Economic Miracle, the Menghean expressway network grew from just 83 kilometers to over 30,000 kilometers in length, fueled by rapid urbanization, high government investment in infrastructure, and surplus capacity in the construction sector. Car ownership increased in tandem, from 10 vehicles per 1,000 people in 1988 to 284 vehicles per 1,000 people in 2015. Once largely reserved for Party members and transportation workers, automobiles became an increasingly common marker of middle-class status in Menghe, and the volume of road traffic skyrocketed.
The MoTC's regulatory directorate struggled to keep up with the pace of road construction, and as a result, many high-volume roads were built to outdated safety standards or poorly integrated with other transit systems. Combined with the rapid pace of Menghe's urbanization, this often resulted in sub-optimal urban transit planning. In some cases, engineers bulldozed entire neighborhoods to make way for expressways through city-center areas; in many other cases, new high-density developments were built around wide avenues four, six, or even eight or ten lanes across. This created serious issues with traffic flow, pedestrian safety, and noise pollution. In small cities, new development zones, and suburban areas,
Alarmed by the issues created by poor urban planning, some of Menghe's local and national government agencies began researching better ways to manage automobile traffic. Many municipal governments sent fact-finding missions to sister cities overseas, especially cities in Bataviae and other parts of Casaterra.
Insŏng was the first city to put these new ideas into practice. In 2010, the city's municipal transportation bureau promulgated a set of regulations which strictly separated low-speed streets and high-flow roads in all new development areas. Existing roadways, and incremental extensions of existing roadways, were exempted. So were expressways, which remained under national management. Even with these constraints, by 2015 Insŏng's new expansion districts were reporting markedly better patterns of traffic flow, with higher satisfaction ratings among both pedestrians and drivers.
As the 2010s progressed, other cities began emulating the Insŏng model. The exact regulations differed from one city to another, but in most cases they approximately followed Insŏng's three-tier system: expressways with controlled access, highways and roads with limited access, and then a direct jump downward to low-volume streets. In all cases, the new regulations exempted existing roadways from conversion, but some city governments independently removed, re-routed, or rebuilt existing avenues to separate street-like and highway-like roadways. Similarly, from 2017 onward, the MoTC's planning directorate adopted an informal best practice of routing new expressways around the outskirts of towns and small cities wherever possible.
Starting in 2019, the MoTC began drafting a new set of nationwide road building standards, evaluating both international best practices and domestic regulatory experiments in order to arrive at the best outcome. Several non-government organizations and independent experts, including some from outside Menghe, were invited to submit advisory briefs. The new regulations were presented to the National Assembly in April 2021 and signed into law on May 2nd; they entered into force on July 1st.
New classification scheme
Trunk roads
Trunk roads, or gansŏn doro (간선 도로 / 幹線道路), are the highest-capacity category in the new road classification system, equivalent to expressways, motorways, freeways, or throughways in other countries. They were previously designated as gansŏn gosok gukdo, or national high-speed trunk roads, in Menghean, and the Anglian translation of "expressways" is still in wide use, though the MoTC now recommends "trunk road" as the official technical translation.
Previous regulations adopted in the 1990s specified that trunk roads must be strictly controlled-access roadways, with no intersections, at-grade crossings, traffic signals, or direct property access, except in the form of specialized onramps and offramps. All are built as dual carriageways with a central reservation or concrete barrier in between opposing directions of traffic and guard rails on either side. The 2021 rationalization scheme largely carried forward the original definitional regulations around trunk roads, but also required that they be routed around city-center areas to the greatest extent feasible, and forbade new trunk road construction in natural parks and nature reserves.
Trunk roads are planned, built, and maintained by the central government via the MoTC, hence their original classification as gukdo (national roads). They are numbered with a Sinmun letter ㄱ (G) followed by a two-digit number for major expressways or a four-digit number for ring roads, secondary routes, or special branch lines: for example, G75 or G1201.
Branch roads
Branch roads, or jisŏn doro (지선도로 / 支線道路), are the next category in the road classification system. This category merged the previously separate categories of roads (doro) and highways (jisŏn doro) into a single classification with a single set of design practices. Accordingly, branch roads have the most diverse layouts in practice: they may be either single carriageways or dual carriageways, with as few as one lane in either direction or as many as three. They are also merely limited access: they may feature onramps, offramps, interchanges, and elevated crossings in certain areas, but they may also feature traffic circles, at-grade crossings, and conventional three- or four-way intersections.
While allowing for some variation in branch road construction to suit urban and rural needs, the NLRR did lay down new guidelines for the rationalization of branch roads, including the following:
- Conventional intersections with more than five entrances are strictly prohibited, and must be adjusted via the relocation of one entrance or converted into roundabouts.
- Bike lanes running alongside a branch road must be separated by a curb, sidewalk, or other barrier, rather than painted road markings alone.
- Parallel parking spaces may not be placed alongside a branch road.
- Direct property access to branch roads, while not entirely forbidden, is restricted by stringent regulations, especially in high-volume areas. Wherever possible, private driveways and parking lots must instead connect to a street which connects to the branch road.
Civilian road users also face more stringent regulations on branch roads. Roadside parallel parking is forbidden outside of emergency stop areas along the shoulder, and motor vehicles with a safe maximum speed of under 50 km/h are forbidden from driving on branch roads. Branch roads may have pedestrian crossings, but jaywalking outside of these crossings is strictly prohibited.
Trunk roads in a municipality (bu) or directly-controlled city (jikhalbu) are managed by the city government, while trunk roads in a prefecture (hyŏn) or league (maeng) are managed by the provincial government one level up.